“Conspiracy theory” is a term that’s used whenever anyone ascribes conscious intent to people with power. I can say to you that school teachers are concerned about their salaries, and they’re organizing, threatening to strike, and pressuring. I can say to you that farmers are organizing and looking for subsidies. The minute I say to you that the plutocracy that own most of America, that they are consciously pursuing power and wealth, someone will come along and say, “What do you have, a conspiracy theory?” or they’ll say “Oh, you’re cynical, or you’re paranoid.” Their view is that stuff just happens, things just happen, or our leaders are stupid, or they’re jerks, or they’re confused, and they don’t know any better, and of course, the critic knows much better than everybody else. People who operate in this world operate with intent. There’s no such thing as imperialism without imperialists, there’s no such thing as capitalism without capitalists, there’s no such thing as rulers that walk around like somnambulists in their sleep. You watch out for your interests. You watch out and you make calculations. What makes you think the people at the top don’t do that? What makes you think they don’t collude and organize? “Oh what do you think? You have a group of people who sit around in a a room and plan this?” And I’ll say “Ohhhh noooo, they don’t sit around in a room. They sit around on carousels and merry go rounds and they go skydiving and hold hands… of course they sit in rooms!”
- Michael Parenti
Max Stirner asks: How is it that personal interests always develop, against the will of individuals, into class interests, into common interests which acquire independent existence in relation to the individual persons, and in their independence assume the form of general interests? How is it that as such they come into contradiction with the actual individuals and in this contradiction, by which they are defined as general interests, they can be conceived by consciousness as ideal and even as religious, holy interests? How is it that in this process of private interests acquiring independent existence as class interests the personal behavior of the individual is bound to be objectified, estranged, and at the same time exists as a power independent of him and without him, created by intercourse, and is transformed into social relations, into a series of powers which determined and subordinate the individual, in which, therefore, appear in the imagination as “holy” powers?
Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.
At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
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